Grammatical Pattern Learning by Human Infants and Cotto Top Tamarin Monkeys

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Cognition. 2008 May ; 107(2): 479–500.
Grammatical pattern learning by human infants and cotton-top

tamarin monkeys
Jenny Saffran1, Marc Hauser2,3, Rebecca Seibel1, Joshua Kapfhamer1, Fritz Tsao4, and
Fiery Cushman2
1 Department of Psychology & Waisman Center, University of Wisconsin – Madison, 1202 West Johnson
Street, Madison, Wisconsin 53706-1696
2 Department of Psychology, Harvard University, 980 William James Hall, 33 Kirkland Street, Cambridge,
MA 02138
3 Department of Organismic & Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 02138
4 Department of Psychology, Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, MI, 49242
Abstract
There is a surprising degree of overlapping structure evident across the languages of the world. One
factor leading to cross-linguistic similarities may be constraints on human learning abilities.
Linguistic structures that are easier for infants to learn should predominate in human languages. If
correct, then (a) human infants should more readily acquire structures that are consistent with the
form of natural language, whereas (b) non-human primates’ patterns of learning should be less tightly
linked to the structure of human languages. Prior experiments have not directly compared laboratory-
based learning of grammatical structures by human infants and non-human primates, especially under
comparable testing conditions and with similar materials. Five experiments with 12-month-old
human infants and adult cotton-top tamarin monkeys addressed these predictions, employing
comparable methods (familiarization-discrimination) and materials. Infants rapidly acquired
complex grammatical structures by using statistically predictive patterns, failing to learn structures
that lacked such patterns. In contrast, the tamarins only exploited predictive patterns when learning
relatively simple grammatical structures. Infant learning abilities may serve both to facilitate natural
language acquisition and to impose constraints on the structure of human languages.
Human language is a vastly complex system that is nevertheless mastered early in life. The
question of how children discover structures that are not transparently mirrored in the input is
central not only to investigations of how language acquisition proceeds, but also to our
fundamental understanding of the nature of human language. One such feature of human
language is phrase structure. Phrases frequently contain unidirectional dependency relations:
the presence of some word categories requires others, which conjointly make up a phrase [e.g.,
nouns can occur without articles like the and a, but an article rarely occurs without a noun
somewhere downstream]. These predictive dependency relationships provide a statistical cue
that highlights phrasal units for learners (Saffran, 2001).
Corresponding Author: Jenny Saffran, Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin at Madison, 1202 West Johnson St., Madison,
WI 53706, jsaffran@wisc.edu, Tel: (608) 262-9942, Fax: (608) 262-4029.
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Saffran et al. Page 2
Why might languages consistently include predictive dependencies within phrases? One
possibility is that predictive dependencies enhance learnability; the presence of these structural
relationships may help learners to discover phrases. Previous studies tested this hypothesis by
comparing the acquisition of two artificial languages (Saffran, 2002). The Predictive language
included predictive dependencies as a cue to phrase structure (e.g., A-words could occur with
or without D-words, but D-words required A-words). The Non-predictive language lacked
predictive dependencies (e.g., A-words could occur with or without D-words and vice versa;
neither word class predicted the presence of the other). Adults and school-aged children
exposed to the Predictive language outperformed those exposed to the Non-predictive language
on subsequent tests of language structure. Similar results were obtained using sequences
created from non-linguistic materials, suggesting that this particular constraint on learning is
not specifically tied to language (Saffran, 2002). These findings are consistent with results
obtained across many distinct literatures suggesting that predictability facilitates the discovery
of underlying structure.
A critical question then is: what does a learning ability that is not restricted to language learning
have to do with language at all? Is the ability to detect predictive dependencies so prevalent
that its relationship to linguistic structure is accidental? That is, perhaps languages use
predictive dependencies, and human learners use predictive dependencies, but these two facts
are independent and provide no mutual explanatory power. Alternatively, predictive
dependencies may be part of human languages because they enhance learnability.
A growing body of research suggests that languages exemplify exactly those structures that
humans are best able to learn (e.g., Christiansen & Chater, 1999; Christiansen & Dale, 2004;
Morgan, Meier, & Newport, 1987; Morgan & Newport, 1981; Newport & Aslin, 2000). This
perspective contrasts with earlier construals of Universal Grammar, in which linguistic
structure was specified by innate knowledge. Instead, at least some aspects of structure may
emerge from constraints imposed by learning itself. On this view, the relationship between a
particular learning mechanism and language structures is not accidental. To the extent that
human languages have been sculpted by constraints imposed by learning, we would expect to
see a close match between the kinds of mechanisms deployed by learners and the structures
that typify languages. However, despite the inherent interest in this hypothesis, it has not been
tested with infant learners (though see Saffran & Thiessen, 2003, for an example from
phonology). If it is the case that linguistic structure and learning mechanisms are intimately
related, it is necessary to test learners who are themselves at the beginning stages of language
acquisition, in order to determine whether the constraints on learning in question are operating
at the necessary point in development.
The present study thus had three goals. First, we explored whether infants could successfully
acquire grammars, ranging in surface complexity, which included predictive dependencies akin
to those found in natural languages. Second, we assessed the related hypothesis that infants
would fail to acquire highly similar grammars that contained structures that are unlike natural
languages. Third, we systematically contrasted human infant and tamarin monkey performance
on these languages to begin an investigation of potential differences in the learning mechanisms
available across species. We note here that comparing only two species, with only one method,
is insufficient to make any broad phylogenetic claims; we see this work as a starting point
intended to invite a broader taxonomic and methodological exploration (Hauser, Barner, &
O’Donnell, 2007).
We began our investigation by asking whether infants can make use of predictive dependencies
in learning an artificial grammar. To do so, we adapted the languages used by Saffran (2002)
for use with infant participants. Infants were exposed to one of two languages: a Predictive
(P)-language, in which predictive dependencies marked phrase units, and a Non-predictive

(NP)-language, that lacked predictive dependencies. While both languages contained elements
that predicted one another, only the P-language contained predictive elements specifically
placed within phrases. This dependency relationship provided a cue to phrasal units in the P-
language, which was not available in the NP-language. Because prior infant studies have
typically used language systems that generate far fewer possible sentences than the languages
used by Saffran (2002) with adult and child participants, we decided to begin our infant studies
by generating the sentence exemplars using only one word token from each word class. While
this manipulation greatly simplified the materials presented during the learning phase relative
to the languages used by Saffran (2002) (in which word classes contained multiple word
tokens), these materials still maintained the critical structural distinction between the P-
language and the NP-language: the presence or absence of predictive dependencies within
phrases.
Experiment 1
Method
Participants—Twenty-four infants (12.5–13.0 months) were randomly assigned to each of
the two experimental conditions. All infants were full-term, monolingual, and free of ear
infections. Half of the infants (mean age: 12.8 months) were exposed to the P-language and
half (mean age: 12.9 months) were exposed to the NP-language.
Materials—The materials consisted of sentences generated from two artificial grammars.

Each element in the grammars represents an item from a nonsense-word class (see Table 1).
The P-Language contained predictive dependencies between word classes:
S → AP + BP + (CP)
AP → A + (D)
BP → CP + F
CP → C + (G)
S refers to Sentence, AP refers to A-phrase, BP to B-phrase, etc. Parentheses denote optional

elements. For example, the possible A-phrases are A and AD. Thus, if a D-word is present it
must be preceded by an A-word; however, the presence of an A word does not predict the
presence of a D word. The predictive patterns are thus unidirectional. C- and G-words follow
a similar within-phrase dependency. The conditional probability for within-phrase elements
(left to right) is 1.0 [e.g., D|A = 1.0]. The directionality of these dependencies (backwards) is
the opposite of English (forwards – the predictive items, e.g. determiners, precede the elements
they predict, e.g. nouns).
The NP-Language lacked predictive dependencies between word classes:
S → AP + BP
AP → {(A) + (D)} [must contain at least one]
BP → CP + F
CP → {(C)+ (G)} [must contain at least one]

Due to the optionality of so many elements, dependencies within phrases were not present. For
example, the possible A-phrases are A, D, and AD. In this case, A words and D words do not
predict one another, as each can occur in the absence of the other. This grammar does have a
phrase structure of a sort; there is a negative predictive relationship between same-phrase

elements: if A is not present, then D must be present, and vice versa. This structure is
uncharacteristic of natural languages.
Familiarization: Sentence exemplars were generated using one token from each word class
(Table 1A). Eight sentences from each of the P- and NP-languages were recorded by a trained
female speaker using descending sentential prosody, with 1 sec of silence between sentences.
Test: Four sentences shared between the P- and NP-languages served as grammatical test items,
and 4 sentences that were not possible in either language served as ungrammatical test items.
The same test items were used to test all infants, regardless of exposure language, to control
for idiosyncratic item preferences. Due to the small size of the language, grammatical test
sentences were drawn from the familiarization corpus (Table 2A). Ungrammatical sentences
were novel for all infants.
Procedure—Infants were familiarized for 3 min while playing quietly with their parent in a
sound-attenuated booth. Infants then received a 2 min refamiliarization session designed to
provide exposure to the lights used during testing. During refamiliarization, the lights were
flashed contingent on the infant’s looking behavior. The subsequent test employed the
Headturn Preference Procedure, in which we measured the duration of headturns towards
concealed audio-speakers. Each test item consisted of two sentences in alternation, separated
by a 1-sec period of silence. Half of the items were grammatical, the other half were
ungrammatical. A test trial began with a flashing light at the center of the wall facing the infant.
When the experimenter signaled the computer that the infant had fixated on the center light,
one of the side lights began to flash, and the center light was extinguished. As soon as the infant
made a head turn in the direction of the flashing side light, one of the test items was presented
from the speaker beneath the light. When the infant looked away for more than two sec, the
test item stopped playing, and the center light began to flash again. This procedure continued
until infants completed the 12 test trials (3 trials for each of the 4 test items, presented in random
order).
Results
The infants showed significant discrimination between grammatical and ungrammatical
sentences after exposure to the P-language, but not the NP-language (see Figure 1). In the P-
Language condition, infants listened significantly longer to ungrammatical items than to
grammatical items [t(11) = 2.52, p < .05]. In the NP-Language condition, there was no
statistically significant difference in listening times [t(11) = .23, p = .8]. An ANOVA
examining the interaction between items (grammatical and ungrammatical) and conditions (P-
language and NP language) was not significant [F(1,22) < 1, n.s.], likely due to variance in the
NP-language condition.
The fact that only infants exposed to the P-language showed a significant test discrimination
supports the hypothesis that 12-month-old infants can make use of predictive dependencies in
grammars written over individual words. Their corresponding failure to learn the highly similar
NP-language materials is striking given the small size of this language (just 8 sentences), and
the use of grammatical test items that were actually played during familiarization. Furthermore,
there was no evidence that the failure to learn the NP-language was due to decreased attention
when contrasted with the P-language: the average duration of the infants’ test looks after
exposure to the P-language (5.25 sec) and the NP-language (5.46 sec) were comparable.

We next explored the hypothesis that this pattern of results is due to detection of the kinds of
low-level statistical patterns investigated in prior infant research (Aslin et al., 1998; Gomez &
Gerken, 1999; Saffran et al., 1996) as well as extensive adult research (e.g., Perruchet &
Pacteau, 1990; Reber, 1989). To do so, we analyzed the experimental materials, computing the
average word frequencies, bigram (word-pair) frequencies and probabilities (forwards and
backwards), and trigram frequencies for the grammatical and ungrammatical test items relative
to the P-language and NP-language familiarization corpora. There was no evidence that the P-
language (Table 3A) and NP-language (Table 3B) familiarization corpora differed in these
particular n-gram properties relative to the test items; the ratios between the statistics for the
grammatical and ungrammatical test items were equivalent across the two exposure language
corpora.
These analyses do not rule out the possibility that other low-level statistical patterns contributed
to the learning outcomes. Any given set of artificial language materials invariably contains
myriad statistical patterns beyond those that are explicitly controlled or analyzed (e.g.,
Seidenberg, MacDonald, & Saffran, 2003), and relatively little is known about which patterns
are detected by infants – other regularities may have contributed to these results. Moreover,
infant experimental designs typically employ relatively few test stimuli, analyzed en masse,
making it difficult if not impossible to track the effects of very specific cues. For example,
consider the ungrammatical test sequence *biff-cav-klor-dupp. On the one hand, this sequence
might be rejected by Language P learners based on the cav-klor bigram if they expect cav-
dupp instead, or based on the klor-dupp bigram if they expect cav-dupp instead, as compared
to NP learners.1 On the other hand, one might predict that *biff-cav-klor-dupp should have
been preferred by P learners over NP learners because the only familiar bigram, biff-cav,
occurred twice as often in the P language as the NP language. There are numerous such features,
across both languages, which learners could have exploited in principle. The important point
is that while these low level regularities occurred throughout both the P language and NP
language exposure corpora, infants were more successful on the P language materials. The
presence of the predictive dependencies in the P-language may have facilitated detection of
those patterns that are most closely aligned to the structure of these languages.
Notably, the languages we used in Experiment 1 were vastly simpler than the structures found
in natural languages along many dimensions. One important difference is that the Experiment
1 materials involved patterns over individual words, rather than word classes or types. In
Experiment 2, we again contrasted the P-language and the NP-language, but this time we used
a larger vocabulary, with lexical items grouped into categories (A, C, etc.). Experiment 2 thus
used the full languages from Saffran (2002), with sentence exemplars generated using multiple
tokens from each word class. These materials thus more closely approximate the operation of
predictive dependencies in natural languages.
Experiment 2
Method
Participants—Twenty-four infants (12.5–13.0 months) were randomly assigned to each of
the two experimental conditions. All infants were full-term, monolingual, and free of ear
infections. Half of the infants (mean age: 12.7 months) were exposed to the P-language and
half (mean age: 12.7 months) were exposed to the NP-language.
Materials—The languages were identical to Experiment 1, except that sentence exemplars

were generated using multiple tokens from each word class (Table 1B). Note that in both
1We thank an anonymous reviewer for providing this example.

languages, there were no phonological cues to word classes (A words, D words, etc). The A,
C, and F classes each contained 4 words, while the D and G classes contained 2 words. This
asymmetry was meant to reflect class size differences between content and function words in
natural languages; function words, typically the predictor items given within-phrase predictive
dependencies, are generally smaller categories than the content word categories that they
predict. In order to discover these classes, learners need to track the distributions of individual
words (e.g., which words tend to precede and follow) and to group words with overlapping
distributions into categories, as hypothesized for natural language word classes (e.g., Mintz,
Newport, & Bever, 2002;Mintz, 2002). The vocabulary consisted of 16 words, arrayed into 50
unique sentences during familiarization. Unlike Experiment 1, the grammatical and
ungrammatical test items were all novel sentences not presented during familiarization (Table
2B).
Procedure—The procedure was identical to Experiment 1, except that the infants received
23-min of familiarization in a booth not used for testing. We increased this exposure because
the 5 min exposure period from Exp. 1 seemed too brief to learn something as complex as the
Exp. 2 materials. Parents were instructed to encourage snacking and quiet play. The increased
exposure time was due to our perception that this was a more difficult task than Experiment 1.
After familiarization, infants were moved to the test booth, and received a brief
refamiliarization (30 sec.) with the artificial language materials, with lights contingent on eye
gaze.
Results
The pattern of results was identical to Experiment 1: infants in the P-Language condition
listened significantly longer to ungrammatical items than to grammatical items [t(11) = 2.77,
p < .05], while infants in the NP-Language condition did not show a statistically significant
difference [t(11) = .002, p = .99] (see Figure 2). An ANOVA examining the interaction between
items (grammatical and ungrammatical) and conditions (P-language and NP language) was
significant [F(1,22) = 6.4, p < .05].
These results are striking even when placed in the context of previous work pinpointing
powerful infant learning abilities (for recent reviews, see Gomez, 2006; Saffran, Werker, &
Werner, 2006). In the P-language condition, infants successfully acquired knowledge about
the distribution of words in a novel language far more complex than those used in prior
experiments, the structure of this language can generate several thousand unique sentences. At
the same time, infants failed to show evidence of learning in the NP-language condition, despite
the general structural similarity of these two language systems. These findings, in tandem with
Experiment 1, suggest that predictive dependencies may in fact facilitate learning even for
infants. The observed pattern of successes and failures for infant learners is consistent with the
hypothesis that patterns that are observed widely across the languages of the world are more
learnable by infants than those that are not. Notably, unlike adult studies of this type, the current
results are not vulnerable to the criticism that learners are simply imposing structures from
their own native language onto the artificial grammars; 12-month-old infants are unlikely to
have acquired much in the way of native language grammatical structure. These results thus
provide support for the claim that some grammatical patterns are more easily learned than
others, and that cross-linguistic regularities may be shaped by infant learning mechanisms.
An alternative argument is that perhaps the predictive languages are inherently more learnable,
by any type of learner, and that success on such grammars is unrelated to the learner’s ability
to acquire natural languages. One way to examine this hypothesis is to contrast humans with
non-human learners. In some cases, we see apparently isomorphic learning capacities. For
example, human infants and cotton-top tamarin monkeys are both facile at spontaneously (i.e.,

in the absence of training or significant exposure) tracking the transitional probabilities

between syllables (Saffran, Aslin, & Newport, 1996; Hauser, Newport, & Aslin, 2001), and
can discover and generalize simple rule-like sequences in syllable strings (Marcus, Vijayan,
Bandi Rao, & Vishton, 1999; Hauser, Weiss, & Marcus, 2002). In other cases, however, there
are divergences. For example, whereas both human adults and tamarins compute non-adjacent
transitional probabilities, only human performance maps on to natural language structure
(Newport & Aslin, 2004; Newport, Hauser, Spaepen, & Aslin, 2004). Similarly, whereas
human adults spontaneously acquire both finite state [e.g., (AB)n] and phrase structure [e.g.,
AnBn] grammars, tamarins only spontaneously acquire the former (Fitch & Hauser, 2004).
These results build on prior work suggesting that the computational abilities needed to acquire
a phrase structure grammar [hierarchical patterning, embedding] may not be spontaneously
available to some non-human animals (e.g., Hauser, Chomsky, & Fitch, 2002; Premack &
Premack, 2002; Savage-Rumbaugh, 1986), although they are able to learn about some kinds
of non-linguistic hierarchical structure such as cup seriation and kinship organization (e.g.,
Fragaszy et al., 2002; Greenfield, 1991; Bergman, Beehner, Cheney, & Seyfarth, 2003;
McGonigle, Chalmers, & Dickinson, 2003), and with significant training, at least one species
– the European starling – can acquire AnBn (Gentner, Fenn, Margoliash, & Nusbaum, 2006).
As noted by a number of commentators (e.g., Hauser et al., 2007; Perruchet & Rey, 2005),
however, acquisition of AnBn can be successfully accomplished by means of multiple
mechanisms.
Experiments 3 and 4 were thus designed to replicate Experiments 1 and 2 using a non-human
primate: the cotton-top tamarin. We followed prior research in using protocols that are
comparable across these two species. Because previous studies have not directly compared
human infants and tamarins on complex grammar learning tasks (the closest being the ABA/
ABB tasks used by Marcus et al., 1999 with infants and Hauser et al., 2002), Experiment 3
used the relatively simple grammar from Experiment 1, with the P-language and the NP-
language written over individual word tokens. Experiment 3 was designed to ask whether
tamarins can learn systems of this complexity under conditions comparable to the infants and
whether, like infants, the tamarins can exploit predictive dependencies.
Experiment 3
Method
Participants—Twenty-three adult cotton-top tamarins (Saguinus oedipus), 13 males and 10
females participated in Experiment 3. All animals were born in captivity, live in social groups
consisting of a mated pair and their offspring, and have extensive experience in laboratory
tasks. Each tamarin was familiarized and then tested on both the P- and NP-languages, with
approximately two weeks between testing (order counterbalanced). Seven participants in the
P-Language condition and 4 in the NP-Language condition were not included in the analyses
due to difficulties moving them to the test apparatus or poor behavior prior to/during test.
Materials—Identical to Experiment 1.
Procedure—We used a familiarization-test procedure deployed in prior experiments with

this colony (Fitch & Hauser, 2004; Hauser et al., 2001, 2002; Newport et al., 2004). The evening
before testing, we presented the tamarins with either the P- or NP-language for 2 hours in their
home-room. The next day, each subject received 2-min of refamiliarization followed
immediately by testing. Data were coded as in prior experiments by measuring an orienting
response to a test stimulus presented from a concealed loudspeaker while the subject was still
and facing away from the speaker [http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~mnkylab/prothome.htm].
Subjects were scored as responding if they turned to look toward the speaker either during the
presentation of the test stimulus, or within 2 s afterwards. Responses were not reinforced. Trials

consisted of 4 grammatical and ungrammatical items with the constraint that a given trial not
follow a previous trial within 10-sec and beyond 60-sec. Order of grammatical and
ungrammatical test items was counterbalanced. Inter-observer reliabilities (blind coding)
ranged between 0.85–0.90.
Results
Like the infants, the tamarins showed significant discrimination between grammatical and
ungrammatical sentences after exposure to the P-language, but not the NP-language (see Figure
3). In the P-Language condition, tamarins responded significantly more to the ungrammatical
items than the grammatical items [Wilcoxon, z = 3.19, p = 0.001]. In contrast, they showed no
statistically significant pattern of response to the NP language [Wilcoxon, z = 0.4, p = 0.69].
An ANOVA examining the interaction between items (grammatical and ungrammatical) and
conditions (P-language and NP language) was significant [F(1,33) = 4.56, p < .05].
These results suggest that tamarins are able to detect regularities in a simple grammar, written
over individual word tokens, when predictive dependencies are present. However, they fail to
make the same test discrimination following exposure to stimuli lacking predictive
dependencies. As with the infants, this failure to discriminate the test sentences following
exposure to the NP-language is surprising because the grammatical test sentences were played
during exposure, and thus should be relatively easy to remember. Given stimuli of this limited
complexity, the two species appear to perform in parallel. We thus ran Experiment 4, which
was an attempt to replicate the pattern of infant successes (P-language) and failures (NP-
language) using the richer set of stimuli from Experiment 2.
Experiment 4
Method
Participants—The same set of 23 tamarins from Experiment 3 participated, 10 months after
completing Experiment 3. As in Experiment 3, each tamarin was exposed to and tested on both
the P- and NP-languages, with approximately two weeks between successive runs of the P-
and NP-languages (order counterbalanced). All tamarins successfully completed this task.
Importantly, we expected little to no carry over from the prior experiment given the lack of
carry over effects in previous research where different conditions are run on the same animals,
often with less time in between conditions (e.g., Newport et al., 2004).
Materials—Identical to Experiment 2.
Procedure—Identical to Experiment 3.
Results
The tamarins maintained the same overall level of responses as in Experiment 3 (33% for the
P-language, and 29% for the NP-language). However, tamarins did not show a statistically
significant pattern of response in either the P-Language condition [Wilcoxon, z = −.21, p = .
84] or the NP-Language condition [Wilcoxon, z = −1.57, p = .12] (see Figure 4). The tamarins
failed to discriminate between grammatical and ungrammatical strings in Experiment 4 even
when predictive dependencies were present. This pattern of results diverges from the infants
in Experiment 2, who showed significant discrimination between grammatical and
ungrammatical sentences after exposure to these P-language materials, but not the NP-language
language materials.
Why did the tamarins fail to learn the predictive language in Experiment 4, when they
succeeded in Experiment 3? One possibility is that tamarins, and presumably other non-human

animals, are able to spontaneously learn links between individual elements (as in finite-state
grammars), but fail to learn relationships between categories of elements (as in phrase structure
grammars) in the absence of explicit training (Fitch & Hauser, 2004; Hauser et al., 2002;
Gentner et al., 2006; for review of these issues, see Hauser et al., 2007). However, it is unclear
whether the infants in Experiment 2 themselves learned categories in this fashion. The materials
did not test generalization to new category members. Deriving a test that would do so raises a
methodological challenge, given that there were no phonological regularities or reference
words to mark the categories. Thus, while it is possible that the infants in Experiment 2 did
learn the distributionally-defined categories and the patterns linking them into phrases, there
is reason to believe that they may instead have learned token-level patterns. A large body of
literature in adults demonstrates the challenge of learning categories given only distributional
information (e.g., (Braine, 1987; Frigo & McDonald, 1998; Smith, 1969; though see Mintz,
2003, for a counterexample). The extant artificial language literature on linguistic category
induction in infancy includes categories in which distributional cues are correlated with
phonological cues (e.g., Gerken, Wilson, & Lewis, 2005; Gómez & Lakusta, 2004). It is thus
unclear whether there are any circumstances in which infants can discover categories in
artificial languages from purely distributional information, in the absence of other correlated
cues; this question is the object of current research.
Returning to the tamarins, their failure to show any evidence of learning in Experiment 4 could
thus be accounted for by information-processing challenges. In particular, the Experiment 4
materials are more complex than those in Experiment 3 across a number of dimensions, which
likely increased the task demands inherent in these experiments substantially. For example,
the Experiment 2 lexicon was three times the size of the Experiment 1 lexicon, increasing the
memory load. Similarly, the tamarins may have failed to generalize beyond the sentences
presented during familiarization, which would have affected performance in Experiment 4
[although these same animals have been shown to generalize over simpler materials in
experiments using similar methods (Hauser et al., 2002)].
We designed Experiment 5 to begin to disentangle potential causes for the tamarins’ failure in
Experiment 4. We hypothesized that some factors were more likely than others to affect the
tamarins’ performance relative to the infants. For example, since tamarins responded at the
same general level in Experiments 3 and 4, but only discriminated the test items following
exposure to the P-language of Experiment 3, such factors as motivation and the distinctiveness
of the materials seemed unlikely to explain the observed pattern of responses. A more likely
explanation is that infants are better able to track and remember large numbers of elements in
sequence than tamarins, perhaps especially when the material is speech – which is far more
familiar to the infants than to the tamarins. To test this possibility, the simplified grammar used
in Experiment 5 employed the predictive dependencies from the prior P-languages, but
consisted of fewer and shorter sentence types and tokens than Experiment 4 (see Table 4).
We also elaborated our repertoire of test items. In particular, within a test session we presented
both “Easy” and “Hard” test contrasts. Easy Grammatical items consisted of strings heard
during familiarization, whereas Easy Ungrammatical items consisted of highly novel reverse-
ordered strings. In contrast, Hard Grammatical items consisted of novel grammatical strings
whereas Hard Ungrammatical items consisted of single sentence-internal violations, like those
tested in Experiments 1–4. Successful discrimination of the Hard test items would suggest that
tamarins can use predictive dependencies in linguistic environments more complex than
Experiment 3 – though less complex than Experiment 4. However, a failure in Experiment 5
would suggest that the tamarins’ difficulties in Experiment 4 were unlikely to be due to the
size of the lexicon or the length of the sentences. The inclusion of the Easy test items allowed
us to ask whether tamarins could learn even simple aspects of these stimuli. A failure to learn
these items, accompanied by levels of response comparable to prior experiments, would

indicate that even relatively simple pattern learning is easily disrupted in the tamarins. We also
included infants as a control group in order to ensure that these materials are in fact learnable,
and to provide an additional replication of the infant results from the P-language conditions of
Experiments 1 and 2.
Experiment 5
Method
Participants—Twelve 12.5-month-old infants (mean age = 12.8 months), and 20 tamarins
(from the same group as the previous experiments) participated in this experiment. Three
tamarins were excluded from the analyses due to poor behavior during the test.
Materials—The grammar for Experiment 5 contained predictive dependencies and was

intermediate in complexity between the P-languages of Experiments 1/3 and 2/4:
S → AP + CP
AP → A + (D)
CP → C + (G)
The language was generated using two tokens from each word class (Table 1C), with 36
possible sentences (see Table 4 for cross-experiment comparisons). The grammatical structure
was simpler than the Experiments 2/4 P-language (no F word or sentence-final optional CP).
When considering patterns of word types, this language is simpler than the P-language of
Experiments 1/3 (just 4 sentence types, as opposed to the 8 types from Experiment 1/3).
However, in terms of patterns of word tokens, it is more complex than the P-language from
Experiments 1/3 (36 potential sentences in Experiment 5 versus 8 in Experiments 1/3).
Five of the 8 grammatical test sentences (Easy Grammatical items) were heard during
familiarization (as in Experiments 1/3; Table 2C). The other three (Hard Grammatical items)
were novel (as in Experiments 2/4).2 Four of the 8 ungrammatical sentences (Easy
Ungrammatical) contained words in reverse order and thus contained multiple violations (e.g.,
*GCA). The other four (Hard Ungrammatical), were similar to the ungrammatical sentences
used in Experiments 1–4: they contained legal beginning and ending elements and violated
sentence-internal phrase structure rules (e.g., *ADG). As in the prior experiments, each test
item consisted of two sentences.
Procedure—Identical to Experiment 2/4, except that the infants received 6.5-min of

familiarization.
Results
Tamarins showed no statistically significant differences in their overall pattern of responses to
grammatical and ungrammatical strings [Wilcoxon, z = 0.41, p = .68; see Figure 5A].3 The
tamarins failed to discriminate the Hard Ungrammatical and Hard Grammatical items
[Wilcoxon, z = .32, p = .74]. They also failed to discriminate the Easy Ungrammatical and
Easy Grammatical items [Wilcoxon, z = .85, p = .40]. The tamarins’ overall level of response
to the test materials was 29%, comparable to Experiments 3 and 4. These results thus replicate
the tamarins’ failure to learn the P-language grammar in Experiment 4.
2An error in stimulus design led to the imbalance in the numbers of Easy and Hard Grammatical test sentences.
3One test item was excluded from the reported analyses because it contained both an Easy and a Hard Grammatical sentence. Including
this item in the analyses does not change the pattern of results.

Infants listened significantly longer overall to ungrammatical than to grammatical items [t(11)
= 5.94, p < .001; see Figure 5B]. The infants successfully discriminated between Easy
Grammatical and Easy Ungrammatical items [t(11) = 5.07, p < .001]. They also discriminated
between Hard Grammatical and Hard Ungrammatical items [t(11) = 4.40, p < .01]. As in
Experiments 1 and 2, infants appear to have had no difficulty acquiring the predictive language
presented in Experiment 5.
General Discussion
The results of these experiments provide a clear illustration of the power of infant learning
mechanisms. While it is of course evident that infants rapidly acquire the rich structural
properties of their native language over the first two years of life, these studies are the first to
show rapid acquisition of grammatical patterns in laboratory learning tasks of this complexity.
After a few minutes of exposure to the P-language, infants in Experiment 1 were able to
discriminate grammatical from ungrammatical sentences in a simple language environment in
which the relevant patterns involved the distribution of individual word tokens. With a little
more exposure, infants in Experiment 2 were able to discriminate grammatical from
ungrammatical sentences in a far more complex P-language, one that generates several
thousand possible sentences. The successes on the P-languages presented in Experiments 1, 2
and 5 are particularly striking given the age of these infants; these 12-month-olds are only just
beginning to produce their first words. These findings broadly support the claim emerging from
numerous artificial and natural language studies that infants’ linguistic knowledge vastly
outstrips language production.
Of potentially greater significance than these successes on the P-languages were infants’
corresponding failures to perform the same test discriminations following exposure to the NP-
languages. In Experiment 1, the infants did not discriminate the test sentences despite the
relative simplicity of this language. Similarly, in Experiment 2, we found no evidence that the
infants were able to acquire the NP-language. The primary difference between the P-languages
and the NP-languages was the presence or absence of predictive dependencies linking words
within phrases together. That said, it is never possible to rule out all other distributional
differences between the languages, and it is always possible that the infants would have learned
the NP-languages given additional exposure. However, the consistent finding that only those
languages with predictive dependencies were learned in this paradigm does support the claim
that infants can make use of strong links between words to begin to bracket the input into
chunks, facilitating learning.
Turning to the tamarin data, the results suggest that tamarins can learn some grammatical
patterns. In particular, they detected predictive dependencies between individual elements in
Experiment 3; they appear to be capable of attending to these kinds of stimuli and are motivated
to respond during testing. Notably, the tamarins failed to exploit the predictive patterns in
Experiments 4 and 5, even though their overall level of responsiveness was the same as in
Experiment 3, suggesting that attention and motivation to respond are unlikely to account for
the pattern of results.4
At some level, these results might be considered unsurprising. After all, human infants learn
human languages, and cotton-top tamarins do not. Similarly, it seems obvious that humans can
learn more complex materials than cotton-top tamarins. Our interest in these findings resides
4A few weeks after the conclusion of Exp. 5, the same animals were tested in a replication of the Hauser et al. (2001) word segmentation
study. The tamarins showed successful discrimination, taking advantage of transitional probabilities to segment a continuous stream of
speech syllables. This suggests that the animals had not habituated in general, and nor had they lost motivation to respond to artificial
language materials.

in the nuanced pattern of results. Infants do not always learn more than tamarins. For example,
both infants and tamarins successfully performed the test discrimination following exposure
to the P-language in Experiments 1 and 3, while both failed to perform the test discrimination
following exposure to the NP-language. Similarly, both groups failed to perform the test
discrimination in Experiments 2 and 4 following exposure to the NP-language. It is thus not
simply the case that infants learn more complex structures than tamarins. The structure of the
materials to be learned critically determines the outcome of learning.
There are of course many possible differences between infants and tamarins that may influence
learning performance, including retention and learning rate. We tested adult tamarins with, by
definition, more mature brains than human infants. However, the infants possess human
cognitive skills (at least in the fledgling phase, en route to the adult form). This crossing of
developmental state and species makes it difficult to predict a priori which factors are most
likely to help or hinder learning in these two groups. The tamarins received the bulk of their
exposure to the languages the night before testing, unlike the infants, who were familiarized
with the materials just prior to testing. This delay may have led to forgetting on the part of the
tamarins, though they did receive a refamiliarization just prior to testing; in prior work with
this species, this is precisely the method used, which in many cases yielded strong evidence of
learning. Alternatively, the overnight delay may have assisted memory consolidation; in fact,
there is suggestive evidence that tamarins show better test performance given an overnight
delay compared to exposure just prior to testing (Hauser, unpublished data). Similarly, recent
results with human infants suggest that sleep may help consolidation during language learning,
particularly given tasks that require generalization from a set of input (Gómez, Bootzin, &
Nadel, 2006).
It is also possible that the tamarins may require more exposure in order to learn. In the current
study, the tamarins received markedly more exposure than the infants: 2 hrs in each experiment,
versus 5 min (Exp. 1), 23.5 min (Exp. 2), and 7 min (Exp. 5) for the infants. Of course, it is
possible that had we increased the tamarin exposure five-fold across experiments, as done for
the infants, better learning would have occurred. But the point remains that the tamarins were
unable to learn as well as the infants even with substantially more exposure. These results are
also limited by the inclusion of only a single non-human species, and need to be extended to
include additional species [e.g., other primates, songbirds with complex hierarchically
organized learned vocal signals] and more complex linguistic structures [e.g., recursive
operations, phrase structures with more intervening material between predictive elements].
While the implementation of widely used experimental protocols is helpful for discerning
convergent evidence, it is also important to explore the consequences of different comparative
methods [e.g., operant training procedures]. The current study represents only the beginning
of a research program designed to contrast human infants with non-human animals, which will
necessarily require parametric variation of the many potentially important variables not
assessed in the present experiments (Hauser et al., 2007).
Moving beyond species-specificity, an interesting related question raised by these studies

concerns the domain-specificity of this type of learning. In studies with adults using the P-
language and NP-language, Saffran (2002) found that predictive dependencies assisted adult
learners in non-linguistic tasks designed to be analogous to the language-learning task. Thus,
for example, when learners were presented with sequences of non-linguistic sounds (computer
alert sounds in one study, or drums and bells in another), or simultaneously-presented visual
arrays of non-linguistic shapes, the P-language learners outperformed the NP-language
learners. These findings led Saffran (2002, 2003) to speculate that constraints to cluster the
input based on predictive dependencies are not limited to language, and might be observed
across a number of domains. While the current studies are limited to linguistic stimuli, it will

be of great interest to ask whether infants continue to show enhanced learning when predictive
dependencies are instantiated in non-linguistic materials.
To the extent that human learning abilities have shaped the structure of natural languages, our
results provide a potential explanation for two central facts about human language that are
often viewed as inconsistent: extensive cross-linguistic similarities and powerful human
learning abilities. If humans are such good learners, why are languages so similar? Our findings
are consistent with the hypothesis that natural languages have been sculpted by potentially
quite general human learning mechanisms: patterns that afford optimal learnability are most
likely to predominate in the languages of the world (e.g., Chomsky, 1965). In this case,
predictive dependencies may inhabit phrases cross-linguistically precisely because they
provide a useful cue to phrasal units. Explanations for the uniqueness of human language may
reside, at least in part, in the uniqueness of human learning.
Acknowledgements
This research was funded by grants to JS from NICHD (R01HD37466) and NSF (BCS-9983630), by a core grant to
the Waisman Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison from NICHD (P30 HD03352), and grants to MH from the
McDonnell Foundation and NICHD (1 R01 DC005863-01A1). Thanks to R. Aslin, N. Chomsky, S. Curtin, T. Fitch,
G. Marcus, M. MacDonald, S. Pollak, M. Seidenberg, and three anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on a
previous draft.
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Figure 1. Experiment 1 results

Mean [SE] infant looking times to grammatical and ungrammatical test tokens for the P-
language and NP-language.


Mean [SE] infant looking times to grammatical and ungrammatical test tokens for the P-
language and NP-language.


Mean [SE] proportion of responses made by tamarins to grammatical and ungrammatical test
tokens for the P-language and NP-language.


Mean [SE] proportion of responses made by tamarins to grammatical and ungrammatical test
tokens for the P-language and NP-language.


Mean [SE] proportion of responses made by tamarins (Figure 5A) and infants (Figure 5B) in
response to Hard Grammatical, Easy Grammatical, Hard Ungrammatical, and Easy
Ungrammatical test tokens.

Table 1
Word Classes used in the Artificial Grammars
1A: Experiments 1/3 Word Classes

A biff
C cav
D klor
F dupp
G jux
1B: Experiments 2/4 Word Classes
A biff hep mib rud
C cav lum neb sig
D klor pell
F dupp loke jux vot
G tiz pilk
1C: Experiment 5 Word Classes
A biff hep
C cav lum
D klor pell
G tiz jux

Table 2
Familiarization and Test Strings
2A. Experiments 1/3

P-Language Familiarization Strings: NP-Language Familiarization Strings:
av dupp biff cav dupp

av jux dupp biff cav jux dupp
lor cav jux dupp biff klor cav jux dupp
biff klor cav dupp biff klor cav dupp
biff cav dupp cav jux klor cav jux dupp
biff klor cav dupp cav jux biff klor jux dupp
biff cav dupp cav klor cav dupp
biff klor cav dupp cav biff jux dupp
Grammatical Test Strings: Ungrammatical Test Strings:
biff cav dupp biff cav klor dupp
biff klor cav jux dupp biff jux cav dupp
biff klor cav dupp biff klor dupp
biff cav jux dupp biff cav jux klor dupp
2B. Experiments 2/4 (The 50 familiarization strings for each of the two languages used in Experiments 2/4 are provided in the appendices of Saffran
(2002).
Grammatical Test Strings: Ungrammatical Test Strings:
hep pell cav pilk dupp hep pilk cav pell dupp
hep klor cav tiz vot rud pilk lum klor vot
mib klor cav jux hep klor cav tiz
rud pell neb pilk loke bif pilk lum klor jux
2C. Experiment 5
Familiarization Strings:
biff cav biff lum jux
biff lum hep lum jux
hep cav biff klor cav tiz
hep lum hep klor cav tiz
hep klor cav hep pell cav tiz
biff pell cav biff klor lum tiz

hep pell cav hep klor lum tiz
biff klor lum biff pell lum tiz
hep klor lum hep pell lum tiz
biff pell lum biff klor cav jux
hep pell lum hep klor cav jux
hep cav tiz biff pell cav jux
biff lum tiz hep pell cav jux
hep lum tiz biff klor lum jux
biff cav jux biff pell lum jux
hep cav jux hep pell lum jux
Hard Grammatical Test Strings: Hard Ungrammatical Test Strings:
biff klor cav hep klor tiz
*
biff pell cav tiz biff jux cav
hep klor lum jux hep lum klor jux
biff cav pell tiz
Easy Grammatical Test Strings: Easy Ungrammatical Test Strings:
biff cav jux lum pell biff
hep pell lum tiz cav hep
hep klor cav jux jux cav klor hep
biff klor lum tiz tiz lum pell biff
* hep lum tiz
*
Items containing these two sentences were not included in the analyses due to an error in the design of the test materials.

Table 3
Average n-gram statistics for the Experiment 1 test materials relative to the exposure sentences; frequencies
computed with one pass through the exposure corpus
3A. Statistics computed relative to the P-Language exposure corpus

Grammatical items Ungrammatical items Ratio
Unigram frequency: 8.00 7.50 93%

Bigram frequency: 4.13 1.71 41%
Trigram frequency: 2.5 0.13 5%
Forwards bigram probability: 0.67 0.41 61%
Backwards bigram probability: 0.60 0.30 50%
3B. Statistics computed relative to the NP-Language exposure corpus
Grammatical items Ungrammatical items Ratio
Unigram frequency: 6.25 6.11 97%
Bigram frequency: 3.23 1.35 42%
Trigram frequency: 1.75 0.13 7%
Forwards bigram probability: 0.65 0.34 52%
Backwards bigram probability: 0.52 0.21 40%

Table 4
Stimulus comparison: Experiments 1/3 (P-language), Experiments 2/4 (P-language) and Experiment 5
Experiments 1/3 Experiments 2/4 Experiment 5

# of sentence types 8 12 4
# of sentence tokens in exposure 8 50 32
Mean sentence length (words) 4.5 4.24 3.375
Vocabulary size 5 16 8

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Cognition. 2008 May ; 107(2): 479–500.

Grammatical pattern learning by human infants and cotton-top

Cognition. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2009 May 1.

Materials—The materials consisted of sentences generated from two artificial grammars.

The P-Language contained predictive dependencies between word classes:

S refers to Sentence, AP refers to A-phrase, BP to B-phrase, etc. Parentheses denote optional

The NP-Language lacked predictive dependencies between word classes:

AP → {(A) + (D)} [must contain at least one]

CP → {(C)+ (G)} [must contain at least one]

Cognition. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2009 May 1.

phrase structure of a sort; there is a negative predictive relationship between same-phrase

Cognition. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2009 May 1.

Materials—The languages were identical to Experiment 1, except that sentence exemplars

1We thank an anonymous reviewer for providing this example.

Cognition. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2009 May 1.

Cognition. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2009 May 1.

in the absence of training or significant exposure) tracking the transitional probabilities

Procedure—We used a familiarization-test procedure deployed in prior experiments with

Cognition. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2009 May 1.

ranged between 0.85–0.90.

Cognition. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2009 May 1.

Cognition. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2009 May 1.

Materials—The grammar for Experiment 5 contained predictive dependencies and was

Procedure—Identical to Experiment 2/4, except that the infants received 6.5-min of

Cognition. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2009 May 1.

Cognition. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2009 May 1.

Moving beyond species-specificity, an interesting related question raised by these studies

Cognition. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2009 May 1.

subclasses. Journal of Memory and Language 1998;39:218–45.

Cognition. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2009 May 1.

Science 2006;17:670–674. [PubMed: 16913948]

apella. Animal Cognition 2003;6:185–197. [PubMed: 12761655]

Cognition. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2009 May 1.

University Press; 1986.

Cognition. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2009 May 1.

Figure 1. Experiment 1 results

Cognition. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2009 May 1.

Figure 2. Experiment 2 results

Cognition. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2009 May 1.

Figure 3. Experiment 3 results

Cognition. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2009 May 1.

Figure 4. Experiment 4 results

Cognition. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2009 May 1.

Figure 5. Experiment 5 results

Cognition. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2009 May 1.

1A: Experiments 1/3 Word Classes

Cognition. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2009 May 1.

2A. Experiments 1/3

av dupp biff cav dupp

biff pell cav biff klor lum tiz

Cognition. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2009 May 1.

3A. Statistics computed relative to the P-Language exposure corpus

Unigram frequency: 8.00 7.50 93%

Cognition. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2009 May 1.

Experiments 1/3 Experiments 2/4 Experiment 5

Cognition. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2009 May 1.

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